My annual battle of man versus garden is underway - and it’s a losing battle

Two years ago the grass was covered in dandelions. Last year it was thistles which became as menacing as triffids. This year, I fear the garden is mulling over which card to play to send me crawling slowly to the settee for a cold beer and lie down.

My ‘love’ of gardening has diminished with each passing summer simply because I don’t have time to do it and b) I’ve no idea what I am actually doing. If a little knowledge is dangerous then I’m the king of the jungle. Literally.

But, the fear of ‘gardening shame’ is real. I don’t want to be the talk of the estate, but since we bought a house surrounded by mature bushes and gardens front and back, there is every chance I will become that household; the one that folk raise their eyes as they point and say “honestly, you think he’d make a bit of an effort.”

I do - I just don’t know where to start. The bit I keep ignoring in the hope it’ll just go away? The space down the side which has become a paradise for weeds? The hedges that are now becoming a horticultural Berlin Wall down the side of the grass?

I don’t so much cut the grass as bludgeon it into submission, while if something new sprouts up I just pull it up, and assuming it’s a weed.

My dad’s mantra of ‘half an hour a day’ in the garden’ is perfect. Trouble is, I don’t have half an hour, so while work consumes a ridiculous number of hours, the garden suddenly goes from “could do with a trim, I’ll get on it tomorrow” to “where the heck did that jungle come from?”

I’m currently hacking my way through the undergrowth that was once a lawn, swashbuckling in a way that would impress Indiana Jones. A wheel on my lawnmower has fallen off three times, I’m all out of swear words, and my brown bin is overflowing with a week to go before it qualifies for bin day. Roll on winter!

I now find myself browsing B&Q for flame throwers and industrial-powered trimmers - anything that can decimate the weeds and wrestle back some control. Strangely, the thistles of last season have all gone. I realised they weren’t just targeting me when I wandered round the corner and saw a neighbour’s garden which could easily have become Kirkcaldy’s first giant maze - albeit a slightly prickly one if you didn’t watch where you were going.

I’m sure fake grass and tarmac would be much easier, but there’s something wrong about ripping up what nature creates just for our convenience, so I shall persevere.

The grass will be tamed by the time you read this, and the bushes which seem to have double in size will be given a quick short back and sides. That just leaves the borders which have become a bit scruffy and overgrown - that’ll take a bit more legwork, but once I come up with a plan, it should be easier; I’ve realised just mucking about randomly at different parts doesn’t actually achieve that much.

Bottom line - the garden shall not defeat me!

But if it does, let me have inscribed on my tombstone “I knew we should have hired a gardener…”